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Mirror.ac.uk To Close

Posted by timothy on from the line-up-alternatives dept.

bmsleight writes "The UK Mirror Service sadly announces that Lancaster University and the University of Kent have lost the Joint Information Systems Committee contract to jointly provide mirroring services. The mirror service is to shut down from 1st August. This could effect many, many GNU projects mirrored using this service, even before August."

27 comments

  1. How will this affect anything? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They lost the contract to do mirroring, so presumably it will be done by whomever won the contract?

  2. Tragic by Vargasan · · Score: 1, Funny

    Now where will I keep my porn?

    --
    Putting the romance back into necromancer.
  3. Maybe not true? by samjam · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I understood one reason for the mirror was than JANET (Joint Academic NETwork) were being billed per byte for UK-bound transatlantic traffic.

    But reading the article (shock - its a small article) it seems like what was turned down was an enhanced mirror, personalisable, RSS based, etc.

    They still enterain hopes of running the mirror service "perhaps on a smaller scale".

    Sam

    --
    blog.sam.liddicott.com
  4. Effect is a noun. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This could affect many, many GNU projects mirrored using this service, even before August.

    1. Re:Effect is a noun. by hab136 · · Score: 0, Redundant
      Actually, "effect" a verb too, just not the right one! :)

      http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=effect

      tr.v. effected, effecting, effects

      1. To bring into existence.
      2. To produce as a result.
      3. To bring about.

    2. Re:Effect is a noun. by mcdrewski42 · · Score: 2

      This post is just an excuse to have my sig read.

      --
      /* affect != effect */ void affect(int *thing,int effect) { *thing += effect; }
  5. Actually, this is very sad. by deggy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I use the UK mirror service alot, even since university and now five years on.

    It's a great, underused and under reported service. Download times on most UK backbones are blazingly fast but these days, with seemingly so much bandwidth around, noone seems to want to worry about using mirrors. I just got the complete gnome 2.6 source at 50kb/s, better that the 11kb/s my DSL link managed from the main site.

    I for one will be sad to see it go.

    1. Re:Actually, this is very sad. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So do I. I used sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk before that - remember that? The old Archie FTP indexes? The Sun SPARCserver that hosted it?

      I see its still around - sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk points to sunsite.org.uk. Unfortunately its on the end of a line from Demon now, so the bandwidth that mirror.ac.uk is probably not there. Be interesting to see if the Demon/Thus line to Sunsite melts if/when mirror.ac.uk closes.

    2. Re:Actually, this is very sad. by RossyB · · Score: 1

      Mirror.ac.uk seems to scale to whatever bandwidth you have. At work we're on a 2M cable modem, and that is maxed out when doing a download from mirror.ac.uk (~270kb/s). 1 meg in 4 seconds is *nice* when downloading ISO images.

    3. Re:Actually, this is very sad. by phaze3000 · · Score: 1
      lftp ftp.mirror.ac.uk:/sites/ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/k ernel/v2.6> get linux-2.6.4.tar.bz2 34386912 bytes transferred in 16 seconds (2.05M/s

      2 meg in one second is even nicer.. I'm *really* going to miss mirror.ac.uk. When I was at uni and directly connected to SuperJaNET the speeds were seriously amazing (8M/sec or so).

      --
      Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
    4. Re:Actually, this is very sad. by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      It is just as useful to people with dial-up modems. There's nothing like only getting ~5kB/s at the best of times, and then doubling your download time because a transatlantic link was slow.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  6. Sad News Indeed by terrencefw · · Score: 4, Informative
    One reason I use mirror.ac.uk is for it's rsync support. You can guarantee that large downloaded files are intact, and repair broken ones by just transferring the corrupt parts.

    If you get a glitch during a regular download and the MD5's don't match, rsync usually corrects it in a matter of a couple of minutes instead of downloading it all over again.

    --
    Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
  7. A great service by vaseyandco · · Score: 3, Informative

    mirror.ac.uk have done a great job for many years, it is unfortunate that they lost the contract, though i hope that the service from the new provider will be as good if not better.

    Then again, knowing jisc (and i do) I not convinced they know a good thing when it stands up and shouts "i'm a good thing". Oh well.

    --
    You bought her a Kentucky Fried Chicken Franchise!!!
  8. Is anything getting lost here? by ear1grey · · Score: 5, Informative

    Some of the first software that I ever released for public consumption is still on mirror.ac.uk from it's time as HENSA back in the early 90's. So my earliest experience of giving and receiving software for free is intrinsically linked to this site. Cue mist & fade up nostalgia in 3..2..1...

    As of this time the JISC don't appear to have announced a replacement, but nostaligia aside, the mirror.ac.uk site discusses termination of mirrors, so I can't help wonder why all data & contracts are not being transferred to the new provider, as would be done if a business were to change hands. This is, after all, a publically funded service and one could reasonably expect it to be run in the same way as a government office - the inland revenue records don't get shredded just because a different company has the contract to run the systems; cue mist, cue daydreaming.

    Without such agreements in place we risk the loss of some of the earliest pieces of intellectual property and prior art that were put in the public domain.

    So I wonder... is anything in mirror.ac.uk going to be lost for good when it closes?

    --
    boakes.org
    1. Re:Is anything getting lost here? by MWelchUK · · Score: 1

      Just found an interesting link on jisc...

    2. Re:Is anything getting lost here? by wrong+un · · Score: 1
      So I wonder... is anything in mirror.ac.uk going to be lost for good when it closes?

      We should mirror it!

  9. Billed per Byte?? What is this, 1967??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Billed per byte you say? Whats next? perhaps every body should be billed per MHz?? Hey, this is supposed to be the 21rst century...not the 19th century, get with it.. here we have google offering 1Gigabyte FREE email storage and we have universities being charged per byte? It's really obvious that the rates carriers charge to send bytes around is wayyyy out of reality to what it really costs...

    1. Re:Billed per Byte?? What is this, 1967??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That was definately the case in the 90's. It may not be anymore.

      But local "on-net" traffic is still *WAY* cheaper than transit traffic. "on-net" traffic you just pay for the pipe from the telco. Transit makes telco pipes look like pocket change.

    2. Re:Billed per Byte?? What is this, 1967??? by Shimbo · · Score: 2, Informative

      Hey, this is supposed to be the 21rst century...not the 19th century, get with it..

      This is 90s style deregulation at work. Tranatlantic cables are expensive; rather than pass on an ever increasing connection charge to every subscribing university, they set a bandwidth based charge, and let the increasing demand for bandwidth drive the provision.

  10. OT: Funny modem story. by Chmarr · · Score: 1
    A long time ago, when I was working for a modem company, we were examining a modem from one of our competitors. On the back, on the model/serial/compliance-sticker, it had these words:

    Placing this device near sources of electromagnetic interference may effect performance.

    So, that's a use of the word 'effect' as a verb, but I bet you it wasn't the verb that they were looking for. :)

  11. shame by Herbster · · Score: 1

    It'll be a shame if the new service doesn't let me download ISOs at 3MiB/s on my desktop at university ;)

  12. Sunsite Northern Europe by LichP · · Score: 2, Informative

    The loss of mirror.ac.uk cannot be underestimated. It is by fair the fastest, cleanest, and most complete mirror site I've ever used. It will be sorely missed.

    It looks like I'll have to turn my /etc/apt/sources.list to point to Sunsite Northern Europe instead. Hosted by the Department of Computing at Imperial College, it was down for a prolonged period while the service was being rebuilt. It is now back up and claims to be ready for use. Doing a test transfer inside the college network, I don't seem to be getting much more than around 270kBps throughput, and I always got much better results from mirror.ac.uk, but they may still be ironing out some problems.

    1. Re:Sunsite Northern Europe by natd · · Score: 1

      The loss of mirror.ac.uk cannot be underestimated. So you are saying it was a waste of time? Are you saying you "could care less"? ;)

      --
      Only big ligs use sigs.
  13. Was I the only one by whoever57 · · Score: 1

    ... to read this and think that The Mirror newspaper is closing it's website?

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    1. Re:Was I the only one by Herbster · · Score: 2, Funny

      yes. :P

  14. I knew the chap administrating it at Lancs by shibbie · · Score: 1

    Nice chap, had his own server room and residences in an exclusive enclave in the uni accomodation. I wonder what this means for him and his future at the uni? I'll be damned if I can remember his Lubbs nick tho... (or if he even remembers who I am, a friend of Miss Sea Wild)